Leonilde Iotti, commonly known as Nilde Iotti (10 April 1920 – 4 December 1999) was an Italian politician of the Communist Party, the first woman to become president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies for three consecutive legislatures from 1979 to 1992.

A member of the Communist party (PCI) and its successor, the Left Democrats, Nilde Iotti was born in Reggio Emilia, the reddest province of Italy’s reddest region, into a working class family. A diligent pupil, she won a scholarship to Milan’s prestigious Catholic university – which left no traces of religiosity. An untormented atheist, she died without a priest at her side.

Having graduated in 1943 in Philosophy, she joined the Resistance. The war over, she became a leading organiser of the PCI-dominated Union of Italian Women (UDI). After the end of the war and the referendum against the Savoy Monarchy, in 1946, she was member of the Constituent Chamber, and one of the 75 members of the Committee entrusted with the drafting of the Italian Republican Constitution. Her considerable female support was soon noticed. Women had just obtained the suffrage. She was selected for a safe constituency and – at 26 – elected to the constituent assembly carrying lightly her identities: young, female, a Communist, and a graduate.

In April 1948 Iotti was elected on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to the Chamber of Deputies, of which she was member without interruption until 1999.

In the 1970s there were generational contrasts with the new women’s movement. She successfully fought for the introduction of divorce and abortion, while warning her younger comrades not to ignore Catholic women’s feelings. Feminists always treated her with the respect due to someone who had started the struggle 20 years earlier.

In 1979 she was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies, the third highest-ranking post in the state hierarchy. She was re-elected in 1983 and 1987, and ruled an often unruly assembly with self-assurance and authoritative impartiality. This daughter of a railwayman and a washerwoman had acquired a regal countenance, a poised and calm presence. In 1992, the name of Nilde Iotti was mentioned for the election of the President of the Italian Republic. She was widely regarded as the best President of the Republic Italy never had.

She died in Rome in 1999. Before the state funeral, an all-women guard of honour stood by her coffin in the hall of the Chamber of Deputies where she had spent her life. She was buried next to Palmiro Togliatti, her manifest last wish.

Thanks to electricalice for reminding me of this anniversary. Sources: (x), (x), (x). An in-depth biography in Italian can be found here.

text-me-luhan:

someone just literally told me on fb ‘omg your city must be really pretty during winter!!! italy is so warm!!!!!!!!’

ah yes

so pretty

A few weeks ago I found this family photo among my grandfather’s stuff, it was one of the oldest pics and the only pre-1960s one that was a candid rather than a posed portrait. I suspect it was taken in the garden of their house, which is in my village and still belongs to one of his brothers. My grandfather is the second on the right, his father (so my great-grandfather) is the man on the right with the silly trousers. The four girls are my grandfather’s sisters, including his twin sister Maria (who died before I was born so I’m not 100% sure which one she is, but I hope she’s the one in the centre since she has a bare midriff, which was sorta taboo in the 40′s in Italy, so that must mean she was super cool, right?) and his regular sister Rosa (who died today and was the only one among the four that I knew a little bit, I’m pretty sure she’s the tall thin one on the left). I have no idea who the man in the back is, I don’t think he was a member of the family though.

Hello, I’ve been reading a lot of travelogues recently and I noticed that a lot of them have the same narrative of “American person goes to Italy, discovers how the Italians are endearingly inefficient yet learns important lessons about life and love.” (A really egregious example of this is ‘the Venice Experiment by Barry Frangipane). As a Croatian, I get annoyed when people are so patronizing towards us, and i was wondering how you feel about those books.

italiansreclaimingitaly:

Hello and thanks for writing! I mostly feel angry whenever I read about travelogues like that. We discussed a couple of similar instances here and here last year and I think it’s mainly disrespectful and a wasted opportunity to actually create bridges between different cultures. Today we’ve been arguing on Twitter over another article (I won’t link to it because they don’t deserve the views, since it’s pretty clear they’re using it as clickbait) about an American who stayed for one year in Genova and wrote a list of impressions that generalizes his single experience to the whole country and says completely false things. The thing I hate the most about this “genre” is that approaching a different culture is never seen as an opportunity to learn, but only to judge like: “We do this different and thus inherently better and God forbid I even bother to understand why you do it like that, you silly uncivilized kids”. That’s the worst attitude one could ever have towards a different set of rules and traditions. And let’s not even mention how most of the times they either keep up with stereotypes from 50 years ago or act surprised when they see those stereotypes that are meant to make us look ancient prove to be completely false.

That said, if anyone knows of a good travelogue about Italy that doesn’t follow this wretched path of disrespect, please recommend them to us!